Solar Jet Hunter

The Sun, our nearest star, supplies the warmth and light that make life on Earth possible. It also generates solar wind, an irregular flow of energized particles that can disrupt communication systems and power grids on Earth, and threaten astronauts in space.

What accelerates these energetic particles? How is the Sun’s outer atmosphere heated to millions of degrees? The Solar Jet Hunter project asks you to help us find solar jets, bursts of gas so hot that electrons are stripped away from their atoms, to help answer these questions. You’ll examine movie clips of the Sun’s surface to find and mark the appearance, disappearance, and shape of solar jets.

Go to Project Website

ages

18 and up

division

Heliophysics

where

Online

launched

2022

What you'll do

Examine movie clips of the Sun’s surface to find and and mark locations of solar jets.
Interact with other volunteers and scientists on the project’s TALK forum.

Requirements

Time: Ten minutes to complete the tutorial
Equipment: An internet connected device
Knowledge: None. In project tutorial and field guide will give you all the information you need.

Get started!

Visit the project website.
Click “Jet or Not” or “Box the Jets” to choose a task to work on.
Click through the tutorial to learn how to recognize solar jets.
Examine short video sequences of the sun’s surface to find solar jets and use the project tools to mark their location.

Learn More

You can find out more about solar jets and the project’s progress by reading the Solar Jet Hunter blog. Follow Solar Jet Hunter on Twitter to stay up-to-date on new data releases and project milestones.

On a field of black space, we see the mottled red and orange-yellow orb of our Sun with its faint corona of red around it. A hand-held magnifying glass hovers over the lower-left horizon of the Sun. Through its glass we see a red-orange squiggle of light that extends out from the Sun's surface into the faint red-glow of the corona and towards the black of space. Above the magnifying glass are the words Solar Jet Hunter in black, stacked over one another across the face of the Sun.

Left: On the right hand side we see a partial view of the Sun’s surface, with black space on the left. A wide, ragged, curling, dragon-shaped jet (it looks like it has two ears and a snout) extends halfway across the image. Below it, two much narrower and straighter jets run from the Sun’s surface left into space. Right: On the left we see a partial view of the Sun’s surface covered in red and orange ragged spots. On the right is the dark black of space. A bright streak sticks out from the Sun’s surface, fading from bright yellow at the surface to pale red at its farthest point.

Left image: Solar jets can have a wide variety of shapes and velocities. Two very different solar jets are visible in this image: a wide, curling jet with a shape like a dragon and a pair of thin, nearly straight jets just below it. This image and the video clips that project participants classify are from the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO). Since 2010, the SDO has made an ultra-violet wavelength image of the Sun every 12 seconds.

Right image: At Solar Jet Hunter, you’ll examine video clips from the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) that look like this image of an erupting solar jet. Since 2010, the SDO has made an ultra-violet wavelength image of the Sun every 12 seconds.

Researcher

Visit Team Website